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The world could run on older hardware if software optimization was a priority

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Re: The world could run on older hardware if software optimization was a priority

#601

Post by ryao »

Gigachad wrote: post #60
_aavaa_ wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except we've squandered that 1000x not on bounds checking but on countless layers of abstractions and inefficiency.

Am I taking crazy pills or are programs not nearly as slow as HN comments make them out to be? Almost everything loads instantly on my 2021 MacBook and 2020 iPhone. Every program is incredibly responsive. 5 year old mobile CPUs load modern SPA web apps with no problems. The only thing I can think of that’s slow is Autodesk Fusion starting up. Not really sure how they made that so bad but everything else seems super s…

You live in the UNIX world, where this insanity is far less prevalent. Here is an example of what you are missing:

https://www.pcworld.com/article/2651749/office-is-too-slow-s...

Re: The world could run on older hardware if software optimization was a priority

#602

Post by xlii »

Gigachad wrote: post #60
_aavaa_ wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except we've squandered that 1000x not on bounds checking but on countless layers of abstractions and inefficiency.

Am I taking crazy pills or are programs not nearly as slow as HN comments make them out to be? Almost everything loads instantly on my 2021 MacBook and 2020 iPhone. Every program is incredibly responsive. 5 year old mobile CPUs load modern SPA web apps with no problems. The only thing I can think of that’s slow is Autodesk Fusion starting up. Not really sure how they made that so bad but everything else seems super s…

It really depends at what you look.

You say snappy, but what is snappy? I right now have a toy project in progress in zig that uses users perception as a core concept.

Rarely one can react to 10ms jank. But when you get to bare metal development 10ms becomes 10 million of reasonably high level instructions that can be done. Now go to website, click. If you can sense a delay from JS this means that jank is approximately 100ms; does clicking that button, really should be 100 million instructions?

When you look close enough you will find that not only it’s 100 million instructions but your operating system along with processor made tens of thousands of tricks in the background to minimize the jank and yet you still can sense it.

Today even writing in non optimized, unpopular languages like Prolog is viable because hardware is mindblowing fast, and yet some things are slow, because we utilize that speed to decrease development costs.

Re: The world could run on older hardware if software optimization was a priority

#603

Post by dismalaf »

dahart wrote: post #217
caseyy wrote: post #91

There is an argument to be made that the market buys bug-filled, inefficient software about as well as it buys pristine software. And one of them is the cheapest software you could make. It's similar to the "Market for Lemons" story. In short, the market sells as if all goods were high-quality but underhandedly reduces the quality to reduce marginal costs. The buyer cannot differentiate between high and low-quality g…

The dumbest and most obvious of realizations finally dawned on me after trying to build a software startup that was based on quality differentiation. We were sure that a better product would win people over and lead to viral success. It didn’t. Things grew, but so slowly that we ran out of money after a few years before reaching break even. What I realized is that lower costs, and therefore lower quality, are a compe…

The problem with your thesis is that software isn't a physical good, so quality isn't tangible. If software does the advertised thing, it's good software. That's it.

With physical items, quality prevents deterioration over time. Or at least slows it. Improves function. That sort of thing.

Software just works or doesn't work. So you want to make something that works and iterate as quickly as possible. And yes, cost to produce it matters so you can actually bring it to market.

Re: The world could run on older hardware if software optimization was a priority

#604

Post by nwallin »

Gigachad wrote: post #60
_aavaa_ wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except we've squandered that 1000x not on bounds checking but on countless layers of abstractions and inefficiency.

Am I taking crazy pills or are programs not nearly as slow as HN comments make them out to be? Almost everything loads instantly on my 2021 MacBook and 2020 iPhone. Every program is incredibly responsive. 5 year old mobile CPUs load modern SPA web apps with no problems. The only thing I can think of that’s slow is Autodesk Fusion starting up. Not really sure how they made that so bad but everything else seems super s…

The proliferation of Electron apps is one of the main things. Discord, Teams, Slack, all dogshit slow. Uses over a gigabyte of RAM, and uses it poorly. There's a noticeable pause any time you do user input; type a character, click a button, whatever it is, it always takes just barely too long.

All of Microsoft's suite is garbage. Outlook, Visual Studio, OneNote.

Edge isn't slow, (shockingly) but you know what is? Every webpage. The average web page has 200 dependencies it needs to load--frameworks, ads, libraries, spyware--and each of those dependencies has a 99% latency of 2 seconds, which means on average, at least two of those dependencies takes 2 seconds to load, and the page won't load until they do.

Steam is slow as balls. It's 2025 and it's a 32 bit application for some reason.

At my day job, our users complain that our desktop application is slow. It is slow. We talk about performance a lot and how it will be a priority and it's important. Every release, we get tons of new features, and the software gets slower.

My shit? My shit's fast. My own tiny little fiefdom in this giant rat warrens is fast. It could be faster, but it's pretty fast. It's not embarrassing. When I look at a flamegraph of our code when my code is running, I really have to dig in to find where my code is taking up time. It's fine. I'm--I don't feel bad. It's fine.

I love this industry. We are so smart. We are so capable of so many amazing things. But this industry annoys me. We so rarely do any of them. We're given a problem, and the solution is some god forsaken abomination of an electron app running javascript code on the desktop and pumping bytes into and out of a fucking DOM. The most innovative shit we can come up with is inventing a virtual dumbass and putting it into everything. The most value we create is division, hate, fear, and loathing on social media.

I'm not mad. I'm just disappointed.

Re: The world could run on older hardware if software optimization was a priority

#605

Post by jeroenhd »

Gigachad wrote: post #60
_aavaa_ wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except we've squandered that 1000x not on bounds checking but on countless layers of abstractions and inefficiency.

Am I taking crazy pills or are programs not nearly as slow as HN comments make them out to be? Almost everything loads instantly on my 2021 MacBook and 2020 iPhone. Every program is incredibly responsive. 5 year old mobile CPUs load modern SPA web apps with no problems. The only thing I can think of that’s slow is Autodesk Fusion starting up. Not really sure how they made that so bad but everything else seems super s…

Your 2021 MacBook and 2020 iPhone are top of the line devices. They'll be fine.

Buy something for half that price or less, like most people would be able to, and see if you can still get the same results.

This is also why I'd recommend people with lower budgets to buy high-end second hand rather than recent mid/low tier hardware.

Re: The world could run on older hardware if software optimization was a priority

#606

Post by rapsey »

TFYS wrote: post #596
diputsmonro wrote: post #571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is why government regulations that set the boundaries for what companies can and can't get away with (such as but not limited to labor laws) are so important. In absence of guardrails, companies will do anything to get ahead of the competition. And once one company breaks a norm or does something underhanded, all their competitors must do the same thing or they risk ceding a competitive advantage. It becomes a…

I don't think regulations are enough. They're just a band-aid on the gaping wound that is a capitalist, market based economy. No matter what regulations you make, some companies and individuals become winners and over time will grow rich enough to influence the government and the regulations. We need a better economic system, one that does not have these problems built in.

Gaping wound that lifted billions out of powerty and produced the greatest standard of living in human history.

Re: The world could run on older hardware if software optimization was a priority

#607

Post by dismalaf »

jcadam wrote: post #476
bruce511 wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're on the right track, but missing an important aspect. In most cases the company making the inferior product didn't spend less. But they did spend differently. As in, they spent a lot on marketing. You were focused on quality, and hoped for viral word of mouth marketing. Your competitors spent the same as you, but half their budget went to marketing. Since people buy what they know, they won. Back in the day MS…

It's not just software -- My wife owns a restaurant. Operating a restaurant you quickly learn the sad fact that quality is just not that important to your success. We're still trying to figure out the marketing. I'm convinced the high failure rate of restaurants is due largely to founders who know how to make good food and think their culinary skills plus word-of-mouth will get them sales.

In the restaurant business, the keys are value and market fit.

There is a market for quality, but it's a niche. Several niches actually.

But you need to attract that customer. And the food needs to be interesting. And the drinks need to match. Because foodies care about quality but also want a certain experience.

Average Joe Blow who dines at McDonald's doesn't give a flying fuck about quality, that's true. Market quality to him and he'll probably think it tastes worse.

If you want to make quality food, everything else needs to match. And if you want to do it profitably, your business model needs to be very focused.

It can't just be the same as a chain restaurant but 20% more expensive...

Re: The world could run on older hardware if software optimization was a priority

#608

Post by maccard »

genewitch wrote: post #569
maccard wrote: post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You use a lot of words like "pretty close to", "nearly", "essentially", but 10, 20 years ago they WERE instant; applications from 10, 20 years ago should be so much faster today than they were on hardware from back then. 11 years ago I put in a ticket to slack asking them about their resource usage. Their desktop app was using more memory than my IDE and compilers and causing heap space issues with visual studio. 1…

Photoshop for windows 3.11 loads in a couple seconds on a 100mhz pentium. Checked two days ago.

That was 30 years ago, not 10.

Re: The world could run on older hardware if software optimization was a priority

#609

Post by TFYS »

rapsey wrote: post #606
TFYS wrote: post #596

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think regulations are enough. They're just a band-aid on the gaping wound that is a capitalist, market based economy. No matter what regulations you make, some companies and individuals become winners and over time will grow rich enough to influence the government and the regulations. We need a better economic system, one that does not have these problems built in.

Gaping wound that lifted billions out of powerty and produced the greatest standard of living in human history.

Sure, but you can't ignore the negative sides like environmental destruction and wealth and power concentration. Just because we haven't yet invented a system that produces a good standard of living without these negative side effects doesn't mean it can't be done. But we aren't even trying, because the ones benefiting from this system the most, and have the most power, have no incentive to do so.

Re: The world could run on older hardware if software optimization was a priority

#610

Post by anitil »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #572
mmooss wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you quickly learn the sad fact that quality is just not that important to your success. Doesn't that depend on your audience? Also, what do you mean by quality? Where I live, the best food can lead to big success. New tiny restaurants open, they have great food, eventually they open their big successor (or their second restaurant, third restaurant, etc.).

In my experience, the landlord catches onto the restaurant’s success and starts increasing rents and usually that means cuts in quality.

I believe this is called something like the 'Michelin Curse' but my google is not returning hits for that phrase, though the sentiment seems roughly correct [0]

[0] https://www.wsj.com/style/michelin-star-removal-giglio-resta...

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